2.4.3 patch borked my symbolic linked WoW

I used Vista's MKLINK to symbolic link my World of Warcraft\Data directories -- hard junction links (MKLINK /J). Worked fine. Patched this morning, got massive errors. Ran the file check program. No luck. Apparently WoW.exe was 2.4.3, but the Data directories weren't -- or vice versa, not sure. And when I tried to repatch, it would say, hey, you already have 2.4.3, you don't need to repatch...

Solution: deleted the symbolic link, copied back in World of Warcraft\Data, copied the old WoW.exe, repatched, and finally, back in business after half an hour.

But, now I gotta do that I think with my other three directories...

I think the safe way to apply patches is to patch the client in the directory that all the others link to first.

For example, I have:

wow1
wow1\Data - real Data directory
wow2
wow2\Data - link to wow1\Data
wow3
wow3\Data - link to wow1\Data

First of all, I update the wow1 copy, which updates the executables and the Data. The updated Data is automatically available to the other installs, but I have to manually copy the executables from wow1 to the other install directories.

This method has worked fine for me a few patches.

hmmz,

i took liberty to make sure all my "account" folders are separate,
so i have
games\wow\main <= data folder, to be run on patch days
games\wow\wow1 <= account 1 WTF, screenshot,....
games\wow\wow2 <= account 2 WTF, screenshot,....
games\wow\wow3 <= account 3 WTF, screenshot,....
games\wow\wow4 <= account 4 WTF, screenshot,....
games\wow\wow5 <= account 5 WTF, screenshot,....

when you work with a setup using symbolic links you will have to pay that patchday a bit more attention :wacko:

For some reason the wow patcher updates the first directory it finds. I ran my update from the main wow directory but the patch data was all written to a different install. The data directory was ok but I had to copy the ui files and exe's. Pain in the a$$.

You need to update toe following files as well, after you patched your main. Copy those files into the WoW root folders of your clones:

Code:

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07/15/2008  04:56 PM            1,069,712 BackgroundDownloader.exe
07/15/2008  04:56 PM            1,753,744 Launcher.exe
07/15/2008  04:56 PM                43,208 Patch.html
07/15/2008  04:56 PM              804,802 Patch.txt
07/15/2008  04:56 PM              88 realmlist.wtf
07/15/2008  04:56 PM              881,296 Repair.exe
07/15/2008  04:56 PM                42,244 Scan.dll
07/15/2008  04:56 PM            8,272,528 Wow.exe
07/15/2008  04:56 PM              221,328 WowError.exe

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Those are my symlinked folders:

Code:

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06/09/2008  10:31 PM        <SYMLINKD>        Data [\\Server\sda\Games\WoWData\Data\]
06/09/2008  10:32 PM        <SYMLINKD>        Interface [\\Server\sda\Games\WoWData\Interface\]
06/09/2008  10:32 PM        <SYMLINKD>        Screenshots [\\Server\sda\Games\WoWData\Screenshots\]
05/25/2008  01:02 PM        <SYMLINKD>        WTF [..\WoWData\WTF]

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I copied everything that was updated. The files dates helped a ton to determine which files were needed. /cheers